Chapter 40
Remy
Vince stopped short when he saw them, his sturdy hooves skidding through the snow. I nearly launched over his head, but I braced myself enough with my legs to keep from tumbling headlong in front of the zombies.
Ripley was already primed for a fight with the infected, and she ran at them. While I climbed down off Vince, she feinted left and right, dividing the horde to make them easier to combat.
I grabbed my splitting maul from my things. It had a long handle, like a sledgehammer, with a broad axe as the head. That made it an ideal tool for cutting wood or cutting down zombies.
Vince stomped his feet and his nostrils flared with rage as he snorted. I quickly put distance between us, because I didn’t want my axe hitting him in the chaos.
He turned away from the zombies, kicking with his powerful back legs.
Hooves cracked through their decaying limbs, sending them flying.
When a zombie managed to get too close to him, the mule grabbed it by the head.
The gelatinous skull squelched between his teeth, and he shook the zombie like a rag doll until the neck popped off, decapitating it.
The headless corpse fell to the ground, and Vince spit out what was left of the skull.
Ripley continued her attacks by taking powerful swipes with her paws, tearing legs out right from under the zombies.
They weren’t killed by that, but they were severely hampered without any lower limbs.
Plus, when they were legless on the ground, it was easier for Vince to stomp on their heads, crushing their greenish-grey matter with the slush and mud.
While I kept my focus on swinging my ax and finishing off any zombies that had only been maimed by Ripley or Vince, I didn’t see the top half of one, dragging itself toward me with its bony hands.
I only noticed it when the zombie clamped down hard on my left foot, tearing straight through my boot and sinking teeth into my flesh.
“Dammit!” I yanked my foot free, then drove my axe down right between the zombie’s eyes.
The worst part of it all was that it was almost over. If I had only been vigilant enough for a few more minutes, we would’ve gotten out of this without any injury. Vince was more helpful against fighting the infected than I expected, and this should’ve been an easy win.
As I finished off the final zombie, I wondered if maybe I’d grown complacent on the boat. I didn’t usually find myself the victim of such a clumsy attack as that.
Thankfully, I was immune to the lyssavirus, but a foot injury during the first week of my long journey was not good news.
I hobbled back to Vince and gave him an appreciative scratch on the neck. “You’re kind of a bad ass, aren’t you?”
He made another snorting sound before sniffing me, practically inhaling my hair. I gave him another friendly pat, then moved on to getting my first aid kit from the packs.
I sat on a nearby rock and pulled off the shredded boot, wincing as I saw the deep bite marks and torn flesh. I used a bottle of antiseptic, pouring it generously over the wound, biting back a cry as it burned, then wrapped my foot tightly to slow the bleeding and prevent infection.
Ripley had finished her zombie feasting, and she came over to me, still licking the green blood off her lips.
She pressed her forehead against me, the way she often did after something like this, as if she wanted to make sure I was okay.
Unfortunately, she did that by butting her head so hard into me I nearly fell off the rock.
“We’ll all be okay, Ripley,” I assured her, running a hand through her thick fur. “We have to keep moving.”
After that, I patched the boot as best I could with duct tape and scraps of leather, making it sturdy enough to keep out the cold and slush until I could find something better.
As the sun lowered below the horizon, so did the temperatures as they boomeranged from highs to lows. The unseasonable warmth plunged before I even had a chance to bed down for the night.
In a fortuitous bit of luck we came across an actual campsite. The wooden sign outside the entrance announced the name Cedar Hollow Campgrounds. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much for remaining structures, at least not that I could see under the ice and snow.
However, there was a pavilion, which meant that we would at least have a roof over our heads. I stretched the canvas tarp over two sides of the pavilion, the fabric snapping as it caught the wind. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave us walls against the gusts.
After I got the fire started, I wrapped Vince’s legs and covered him in a blanket. Then I settled down with Ripley by the fire and tried not to think about the throbbing cold in my toes.
“It’ll be better in the morning,” I promised Ripley and Vince as we huddled around the flames.
But that turned out to be merely wishful thinking. The morning continued with arctic winds, so bone chillingly cold my lashes froze to my face.
The shelter wasn’t nearly enough to protect from it, and Vince had started stomping his feet and pacing, presumably to keep warm, so it was time to move on.
My coat and matching gloves were a gift from Boden, something he’d had Harlow specially make for me from a caribou hide he’d harvested.
My balaclava was hand made by Sienna with Romney wool.
My boots had been a brand-new military-grade winter tactical pair in exactly my size that I happened to find during a scavenge trip last summer.
I had prepared about as well as I could to withstand this weather, and still, the cold kept seeping in. So deep into my bones I feared I’d never be warm again.
By midday, I couldn’t feel most of my left foot, and I honestly didn’t know how long the mule and the lion could handle these temperatures without some kind of a reprieve.
We couldn’t keep going like this, deliriously stumbling forward through ice and cold sharper than any blade. I had to do something.
Before I had left, I had copied a map from Lazlo, telling me how to get to Glacier Valley.
He had very clearly marked a waypoint town called Fort Lately with a big red X.
He warned me that the Revvers were there and described them as some weird cult who worshipped the dead.
They didn’t sound like they were more than I could handle.
But I didn’t know how much longer the animals could handle the pervasive cold.
I’d brought along bees wax to coat the pads of Ripley’s paws to protect them some, but she wouldn’t wear shoes or coverings.
And honestly, her claws were large enough that I couldn’t force the issue.
At least her fur was exceptionally thick after years living through Canadian winters.
When we reached the river, instead of going west toward Glacier Valley, I headed north to the town of Fort Lately. It wasn’t an ideal option, but it was the only one I felt like I had, if I wanted to keep Vince healthy and give Ripley a break.